War
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And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee. But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them. (Deuteronomy 7:22-24)
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places).(Ephesians 6:12)
God did all the fighting when the Hebrew slaves made their exodus from Egypt. God struck the land of Egypt with plagues, finally slaying the firstborn of man and animal. The Pharaoh of Egypt opposed the release of his slaves but God broke the back of his resistance. No armed rebellion of the Hebrews themselves was necessary to accomplish the obtaining of their freedom.
Christ Himself, with the assistance of no human being, paid the full price for our redemption on the cross of Calvary. The Son of God came into full confrontation with the God of this age, and by His obedience to the Father totally destroyed the authority over mankind maintained by Satan. Jesus—and Jesus alone—destroyed the authority of the devil.
But when the Israelites entered their land of promise,they had to fight. God helped, intervening on their side in many instances. But the Jews had to fight!
Can this be true also of us Christians? Is it a fact that while Christ accomplished our initial salvation by Himself, we also must fight (with God’s help) fierce battles against a vicious and determined enemy in order to enter our inheritance, into the "rest of God"?
There is a time when the Christian is to be a sheep, wandering in the wilderness of instruction under the guidance of the Good Shepherd, sometimes fighting minor skirmishes as the Lord leads. But the day will come when the Christian becomes a soldier in the Lord’s army and follows his Commander in Chief, the Lord of Hosts, the Lord strong and mighty in battle, into the crushing assault on all the forces of the enemy.
The kingdom of darkness will be destroyed by Christ acting through the Church, the Body of Christ!
Because the battles of the Lord are fought by the army of angels as well as by the army of Israel it was necessary for Joshua to meet the commander of the angelic troops.
And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? (Joshua 5:13)
How often has the Christian Church, and how often have we as individuals, attempted to fight the battles of the Lord using only human strength and wisdom and material resources? But when we come up against strongly entrenched positions of the enemy we begin to understand that the Lord Jesus fights in the spiritual and in the natural realms at the same time.
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers of spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. As soon as we achieve victory in the spirit realm, victory is possible on the earth. The cooperation of spiritual and human forces, as the Holy Spirit directs, is necessary before the fortresses of Hell can be demolished.
Through the Lord Jesus Christ, God will destroy completely the entire kingdom of unclean spirits from the least to the greatest. Total victory is ahead for the Church, the Body of Christ. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (I John 3:8).
The mission of Christ (the Anointed Deliverer) is to break the yoke of Satan and set men free. Christians are to take up this mission, following the Lord Jesus wherever He goes, being filled to overflowing with the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
After coming across the "Red Sea" (being baptized in water into the death and resurrection of Christ) we soon find ourselves, not in any promised land of power, glory, and excellent fruits but in a "waste howling wilderness," in an uninhabited desert, spiritually speaking.
The "wilderness" experience is the school of the Holy Spirit. In the wilderness we learn to "eat manna" (to depend continually on Christ for our life, our strength, our wisdom, our holiness and righteousness). We are taught to "follow the cloud by day and the fire by night" (to wait patiently for the leading of the Holy Spirit; to walk in the blessings that come during the "day," and also to follow the judgments of God’s Word through the "nights" of our discipleship).
We learn how to be healed spiritually and physically by gazing at the "brass serpent" (by looking to the redemption that flows from our Lord Jesus on the cross). We understand that God means exactly what He says and that those who disobey the Lord’s revealed will for their lives soon find themselves in difficult and painful situations.
We Christians are taught many lessons in the wilderness. It was in the wilderness, at Mount Sinai, that the Ten Commandments were issued by the Lord. In the Christian experience it is in struggling faithfully through problems and troubles, as we attempt each day to follow the Lord, that we begin to come under the law of the Spirit of life. Trouble, perplexity, persecution press us into Christ so He can be formed in us.
One of the principal reasons for wandering in the wilderness is preparation for war. When a Christian is first redeemed he may not be wise or strong enough to stand up successfully during vigorous spiritual combat. Think about the meaning of the following passage:
And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 13:17,18)
This was a long unpleasant detour to the south!
We learn valuable and eternal lessons during our "wilderness wandering" if we respond readily to the Holy Spirit and are good students. We are taught how to follow God; and we become strong in the Lord provided we exercise faith, courage, perseverance, and single-minded resoluteness in our determination to follow Christ all the way to the fullness of the realization of the promises of God (Hebrews 3:14).
The knowledge and strength we gain in the wilderness will make it possible for us to stand when God begins to bring us against the enemies who are in possession of our inheritance, our rest, our land of promise. Every trace of sin, rebellion, and self-seeking must be purged from our personalities.
If God were to bring us immediately into spiritual victory, responsibility, and power it is likely we would be tricked into deception by the cunning devices of Satan. The wilderness is not a good land, and Satan does not press us too much as long as we are wandering about in a hot desert wasteland, so to speak, far from the rich treasures of the Lord.
God calls us from our bondages and then promises that He is taking us to a glorious and fruitful land of peace and joy. The land of promise is our inheritance. It is the rest of God, the abiding of God in His people and they in Him. It is the land of fulfilled dreams, the impossible come true, the end of the rainbow.
However, there is a problem with the fulfillment of the glorious dream, with the end of the rainbow. It was a problem for the Hebrews and it is a problem for Christian believers. The difficulty is this: the land of promise is occupied. It is not vacant, ready to be taken over by God’s flock. Our land of promise is occupied at this time by God’s enemies.
The land of promise of Israel was occupied by savage tribes who practiced devilish idolatries, including the worship of their sexual lusts and the burning of their children in the fire as sacrificial offerings. Their abominable, degrading, demon-possessed patterns of behavior had been intensifying the wrath of God during the time Israel was multiplying in Egypt.
It was God’s intention to use Israel as the sword of His judgment against the Philistines, just as it now is God’s intention to use the Christians as the Holy Spirit-directed Word of God, the fiery Word of judgment, against the kingdom of Satan. The land of promise, in whatever form it takes, always is occupied by evil spirits until, in God’s appointed time, they are driven out by those who are obedient, holy, and anointed with the Spirit of God.
When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: (Deuteronomy 7:1,2)
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